Pentagon Hopes to Declassify Hidden Threat in Mosul: ‘Dud’ U.S. Bombs

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Smoke from an airstrike by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State rose behind an Iraqi soldier in Mosul in May. The coalition dropped thousands of bombs on the city.CreditIvor Prickett for The New York Times

BAGHDAD — The Pentagon is seeking to declassify strike targets in Mosul where American bombs did not explode, Defense Department officials say. That information would be used as part of a long and potentially dangerous effort to make the city, the site of eight months of fierce fighting between the Islamic State and an American-led coalition, livable again.

Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the commander of the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said Thursday that he was looking for a way to lift longstanding rules that keep secret, for 25 years, the exact coordinates of unexploded ordnance.

Humanitarian groups and ordnance removal specialists on the ground in West Mosul have reported that the city is littered with booby traps and improvised explosive devices left by Islamic State fighters, in addition to dozens, and possibly hundreds, of so-called dud bombs that were dropped by United States warplanes but never exploded.

“ISIS used the planting of I.E.D.s as literally a weapons system to make it as difficult as they could for Iraqis to return home,” said David T. Johnson, vice president for strategic development and Washington operations with Janus Global Operations, which works with the United States on ordnance removal. Islamic State fighters booby-trapped West Mosul “to a degree that people in our business have not seen before,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview.

A Janus ordnance removal specialist said the company had found makeshift explosive devices in stoves in residences, in laboratories at Mosul University and in the milling machines of a cement factory. On a single day, Wednesday, Janus removal specialists found about 50 improvised bombs in Bashiqa, a town around eight miles east of Mosul.

Several weeks ago, Janus removal specialists found a bomb concealed in a child’s stuffed animal in an East Mosul home. The device, the company said, was constructed to explode if someone picked it up. Removal experts were able to disarm it after they noticed wires sticking out of the back of the stuffed animal, which was bulging in the spot where the bomb had been sewn in.

Ordnance removal specialists have discovered so many improvised bombs in Bashiqa that United Nations Development Program officials entering and leaving the camp there have had to drive a circuitous route to avoid being blown up.

In contrast to the booby traps and makeshift bombs left by the Islamic State fighters, the unexploded American ordnance is much easier to find — once the Pentagon gives removal experts the grid coordinates. The American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State dropped thousands of bombs on Mosul in the battle to free the city. Mosul’s fall to the Islamic State in 2014 thrust the Islamic State onto the front pages and home pages of newspapers around the world.

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A land mine discovered by Norwegian People’s Aid near Mosul on Wednesday. The Mosul area is littered with booby traps and improvised explosive devices left by Islamic State fighters.CreditAzad Lashkari/Reuters

Normally, the Pentagon does not like to disclose details that military planners view as “operational,” and the specific location of unexploded American ordnance is included in that definition. But General Townsend said on Thursday that he believed it was necessary to find a way around the 25-year declassification process.

“I’m of the belief that if it’s history, there’s nothing wrong with the world knowing about it,” General Townsend said. His was speaking at a meeting in Baghdad with reporters who were accompanying Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the head of United States Central Command, on a trip to Iraq.

“We want to help clear explosive remnants of war from Mosul, and from all the places we’re helping the Iraqis fight,” General Townsend said. “So we’ll find a way to do it.”

Defense officials said the coordinates of unexploded American ordnance in Ramadi, Falluja and other spots in Iraq would probably be declassified as well.

At the moment, removal experts can get the six-digit coordinates of unexploded ordnance from American military officials. But those unclassified reports place the dud bombs only within a 100-meter circle — a huge area that can take hours, and even days, to search.

Defense officials said that one plan would divulge the 10-digit grid coordinates of dud bombs. That would pinpoint the ordnance to a one- to three-meter area. The dud rate for American bombs depends on the type of bomb used. American officials say that around 2 to 3 percent of ordnance dropped in airstrikes does not explode.

“Every army, if you fight over a piece of ground, you will leave a dud,” General Townsend said. “Bombs don’t go off. But we’ll find a way to help them.”

In the month since the Iraqi government announced the liberation of Mosul, the city has begun the painstaking task of putting itself back together.

“When we went into the city, there were tons of I.E.D.s, explosives, tunnels,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for the Iraqi military, said Thursday. “We are cleaning now the city, and we hope that when everything is done, the citizens will come back and start their lives again.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Pentagon Hopes to Declassify a Hidden Threat in Mosul: ‘Dud’ U.S. Bombs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe